ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

ENTERTAINMENT

The Lennon Files: Yoko Ono has sued a former family assistant over long-standing claims that he stole hundreds of John Lennon’s personal items after the musician’s murder in 1980. Fred Seaman worked for the Lennons from 1979 to ‘81; he pleaded guilty in 1983 to stealing four journals and was sentenced to five years’ probation. As part of the plea, he returned several boxes of personal items to Ono. However, the suit claims that additional family photographs allegedly stolen by Seaman have turned up in books written by him and on a recent cable TV special in which Seaman was interviewed. Seaman could not be reached for comment.

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New No. 1: New albums from rappers Nas and Krayzie Bone crashed onto the nation’s album chart this week, with Nas’ third release, “I Am,” debuting at No. 1 (with 471,000 copies sold), while “No Scrubs,” the debut album from Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s Krayzie Bone, landed at No. 4. Teen pop queen Britney Spears’ ” . . . Baby One More Time” fell to No. 3, while hip-hop trio TLC’s “Fanmail” came in second for the week, according to SoundScan.

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In the Bidding Mood: A Colorado businessman paid $35,000 at a Sotheby’s auction Tuesday for a military logbook that holds a clue to bandleader Glenn Miller’s mysterious disappearance aboard an airplane during World War II. No trace was ever found of the single-engine aircraft that disappeared over the English Channel in 1944. One theory was that it went down due to bad weather, but the flight log of a late Royal Air Force navigator, Fred Shaw, suggested that Miller’s plane may have been blown out of the sky by bombs jettisoned by a Royal Air Force squadron returning the same day from an aborted raid on Germany. Shaw remembered seeing a small plane spiraling out of control as the bombs burst around it, and in 1985, Britain’s Ministry of Defense wrote to Shaw saying, “In retrospect we now lean toward this being the most likely solution to the mystery.”

QUICK TAKES

People may be talking about the end of the century, but they weren’t all that interested in watching a recap of it. ABC News’ 12-hour, six-night “The Century” documentary, which ended Saturday night, averaged just 7.8 million viewers per episode, according to Nielsen Media Research figures. Although it boosted ABC’s normal Thursday night viewing, the documentary dragged the network down on Monday and Saturday. . . . An investment group headed by Robert De Niro and Miramax Films co-chairman Harvey Weinstein are in final negotiations to launch a high-tech film studio at the former Brooklyn Navy Yards, New York City officials said. The group hopes to build 240,000 square feet of sound stages equipped with a fiber-optic network for transmitting live Internet feeds.